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Three Sexuality and Language OLogic LOGIC IS ABOUT discerning truth. Language expresses particular logical methods used throughout history to secure stable judgments about changing circumstances. Logic is generally believed to be necessary for getting beyond material transience in the search for continuing truth. Language, as the vehicle of logical thought, is often considered to be independent of the particular conditions of the thinker. It is the main form of discursive symbolizing. By this I mean language is a system of concepts and relations of concepts which give conceptual meaning to our experiences. Language is a major medium by which cultural values, attitudes, and beliefs are shared. For this reason it is important to connect language to its users, namely, bodied persons, in order to gain greater understanding of the connectedness of language to lived experiences. In this chapter I shall explore the assumption that physicality and language are mutually influential in attempts to negotiate coherence of meaning in the midst of lived ambiguities. This is especially important with respect to women because language in North American society, the context from which I speak, is shaped more by men's ideas and activities than women 's. Because neither men's nor women's ideas can be separated from their subjectivity and socially constructed subject positions, it is important to ask, 'How is language connected to biology?' In other words, 'How does nature influence culture?' A significant reason for asking this question is to attempt to redefine the relation between nature and culture as a mutually exclusive one. It is also a way of employing feminist analysis to transform humanism. Prior to feminist analysis, humanist ideas were shaped by a view of sexual difference in which one term of sexual difference was constructed as 'subject ' and the other term was constructed as 'other.' The goal here is to think through sexual difference differently so that the two terms of sexual difference (female and male) are equally symbolized as subject terms. Language plays a major role in this resymbolizing process in which logic is connected to living subjects in the construction of meaningful claims about diverse realities in the pursuit of reliable knowledge. Notes to Chapter Three are on pages 164-66. 115 116 Bodied Mindfulness The history of language in Western culture is inseparable from the history of logic (Nye 1990). Different cultures are shaped by their particular dominant logics, just as different disciplines in universities have their own differentiated methods of reasoning. A common feature, though, of the history of dominant logics and of different academic disciplines in Western culture is the assumption that thought is separated from materiality . That assumption is integral to the variations in particular forms of logic and disciplined-based methods of obtaining knowledge. Training in academic disciplines is largely about acquiring the correct kind of knowledge in prescribed ways. That is referred to as disciplined learning. One learns to think and act like one's colleagues, guided by the experts who are granted their authority by the community of scholars in the discipline .I Senior scholars train junior scholars to think as they do. Junior scholars desire approval by their authority figures. Senior scholars often achieve their desired immortality through the adoption of their ideas by students. In this process knowledge is canonized and tradition is established and passed on as received knowledge. Received knowledge is often equated with responsible knowledge that takes on a reality of its own. Responsible knowledge is understood to embody truths which can be learned by anyone who is adequately trained in the prescribed methods of acquiring knowledge in a particular discipline. New insights are accepted as creative innovations so long as they comply with the rules of logic that are intrinsic to the prescribed method of inquiry used in the pursuit of knowledge. In her examination of the history of Western logic, Andrea Nye points out how logic (in the discipline of philosophy) is seen by logicians as the activity that reveals the structure of truth. She says ironically, "The logician does not speak; he does not tell the truth; he exhibits it" (1990:4). According to Nye, logic in Greek philosophy can be traced back to Parmenides , sixth century B.C.E. He was directed by the goddess beyond herself toward disembodied truth. The object of Parmenides' search was "a well-rounded sphere, uniform and not admitting of degrees, homogeneous and not subject to any death or destruction" (p. 12). That is the nature of Being, for Parmenides. It...

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